


The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship

by Miaou Jones (miaoujones)



Category: South Park
Genre: Friendship, Gen, M/M, Oral Sex, Rentboys, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-31
Updated: 2011-08-31
Packaged: 2017-10-23 06:55:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/247447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miaoujones/pseuds/Miaou%20Jones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clyde's philosophy: if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with—or find some dude and pay him for sexual favors or take his money for the same or whatever, fuck you. Though it may seem hypocritical, Kenny does not approve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship

**Author's Note:**

> Title borrowed from the closing lines of _Casablanca_ , as is the paraphrased dialogue at the end.

Clyde can dance: "like a white boy," he said, laughing, when he sat down next to Token a few hours ago. Token, like Clyde, is only here to drink. Drink, drink, drink the night away, as the classic song didn't say but probably should have.

The music here isn't classic, but that doesn't stop Clyde from drinking. When there's an abrupt and brief respite from the techno poundings the dancing boys (Craig dancing circles around Tweek; literally, closely) are so into, Clyde raises his glass and drinks to that. To dancing boys; to respite.

The deep, relentless techno pulses to life again, catching Token in its rhythm. He told Clyde he didn't want to dance, but the answer turns out to be different when it's Wendy and Bebe doing the asking. This phenomenon—different answers to the same question, depending on the asker—is not new to Clyde. He watches the three of them on the floor, the tightness of their rhythm, and wonders if they're all fucking yet.

Two dangerously full shot glasses come to land gently on the table, one after the other. Clyde follows the hand that set them down and finds it attached to a waitress. He touches her arm and leans toward her. "I didn't order these." Her mouth moves but Clyde can't make out the words. Brow furrowed, palms lifted and shoulders hunched into a confused shrug, he looks up at her, then turns to see where she's pointing: he can't figure out when Craig would have had time to order drinks, gracefully tangled up in Tweek's lithe body as he is, but apparently that's what has happened. He shifts his weight to one side as he reaches into his back pocket for his money clip and peels off a couple of bills, not sure what denomination they are; whatever they are, they must be enough because the waitress nods her thanks and continues onward with her tray.

Clyde glances at the dance floor again. Craig is shimmying around Tweek like he's a novelty stripper who keeps his clothes on and Tweek is his mobile pole. He doesn't look thirsty, at least not for whatever is in these little glasses, so Clyde slams both shots.

He shoulders his way over to the dance floor, vaguely aware of people addressing him when they collide, letting the advice to watch where he's going bounce off him harmlessly. When he gets to the dancers, he puts a hand on Token's shoulder. "Hey, man, I'm gonna take off."

"Hang on," Token says, his body still moving in perfect synchronicity with the girls. "I'll go with you."

It may be old-fashioned, but Clyde never has liked to see a girl cry, let alone be the cause of it. Wendy and Bebe don't look like they're going to cry, but they don't exactly look happy at Token's words, so Clyde shakes his head. "Stay, dude. I'll catch you tomorrow or something." He doesn't wait to find out if Token is going to try to stop him.

The air outside is cooler, the music all bass line. Clyde keeps walking until he can't feel it anymore. He stops at the next corner and stands there until a cab pulls over for him. When he tells the driver the part of town he wants to go to, the guy gives him a look in the rearview mirror but only nods and keeps driving. Clyde's stomach settles. Of all the times he's done this, the cabbie has only pulled over and kicked him out twice and only once did he wind up on the ground with a boot in his face, but he still gets the jitters every time when he names the intersection of his destination.

There aren't many boys working the street tonight. At a glance, none of them are what he wants. Could be that someone will come along, though, come back from another "date" and then Clyde will get his chance. He keeps his eyes averted as he walks past them all, careful not to make eye contact.

"Hey," a familiar voice says.

Clyde wants nothing more than to keep walking, but the word sinks down through him, settling in his feet and turning them to lead.

"I've seen you here before. How come you never say hey to me?"

Clyde looks at him now. He can't tell what Kenny is up to, whether he's breaking their unspoken agreement not to acknowledge each other here or twisting it into some new game. Kenny stares right back, giving away nothing. Finally, Clyde reaches out and fingers a lock of blond hair, shimmering like gold, brighter and more desirable than that precious metal. "You're not what I want."

Kenny reaches up to touch his hair, letting Clyde's fingers slide away beneath his when they touch. "What if I dye it black?"

When they were kids playing at superheroes, Clyde remembers that Kenny claimed to have an actual superpower. He said it was that he couldn't die, but Clyde doesn't think that's it. He thinks Kenny has the power to increase and solidify the iron in your blood until you're so heavy you can't move at all.

Finally he says, "You'll never be what I want."

"And you think someone else here will?"

Clyde shakes his head. "No," he says. "No one will ever be what I want."

Either Kenny's power has a limited duration or he takes pity on Clyde or something, because Clyde's iron-laden blood re-liquefies all at once; or maybe this is a new power, because his bones seem to turn to liquid, too, and he staggers, leaning desperately against the wall.

"Dude," Kenny says, violating the next unwritten rule and putting a hand on Clyde. Without the strength to shrug it off, Clyde looks at it there on his shoulder, then closes his eyes.

In the dark he made for himself, he finds he doesn't mind Kenny's hand so much. He knows it's Kenny's hand, can't or at least won't pretend otherwise, and he won't die if the hand leaves him; but he doesn't mind that it's there.

Kenny's hand is still there when a voice, this one unfamiliar, inquires as to Kenny's interest in taking a walk. Kenny starts to answer, but the new voice cuts him off:

"Not you. Him."

As Kenny's fingers tighten on him, Clyde opens his eyes and turns his head toward the stranger.

"He doesn't take walks," Kenny says.

The stranger smiles at Clyde. His teeth show enough for Clyde to see they're white, but not whether they're straight or crooked. His eyes are hidden behind wire-framed sunglasses that Clyde hopes are prescription, because otherwise it is both ridiculous and obnoxious to be wearing them at night. He has no facial hair; the hair on his head is neatly trimmed to just below the ears, straight, and darker than the night sky.

"Yeah, I do," Clyde says as he pushes off the wall, pushes at Kenny's hand even as it's falling away from him.

"Dude—"

Before Clyde can cut Kenny off, the stranger does it: "He looks like a big boy, let him make his own decisions. Unless he's retarded." He leans a little closer, like he's studying Clyde for tell-tale signs. "You a retard?"

Only sometimes, Clyde thinks. Aloud he says simply, "Let's go."

As Clyde starts to follow the stranger, he hears Kenny say, "Don't do this, man."

"Shut the fuck up," Clyde says without turning around. After a few more steps, he cocks his head up at the stranger, who is an inch or two taller. "You have a car?" he asks, because that's what the guys he takes for walks here always ask him.

"Yeah, but let's go down here first," the stranger says, pausing at the mouth of an alleyway. "There's something I want to show you."

Clyde has used this alleyway himself, but he's never used a line as good as that and as they walk down into darker shadows, he stores it away for future usage. He doesn't look at the money the stranger gives him when they come to a stop. As Clyde is tucking it into his pocket, the stranger puts his hands on Clyde's shoulders and leans in to kiss him, but Clyde turns his head away.

"Okay," the stranger says softly, but there's nothing soft about his touch as he presses on Clyde's shoulders, and Clyde finds himself going to his knees. As he sinks down, he realizes he thought the stranger was going to want to suck him off, but he doesn't know why he thought that because when he's been in the stranger's place, he's also been the one pushing a boy to his knees—well, not pushing, but asking him to go down and then tangling his fingers deep in dark, dark locks.

Clyde's eyes are closed but he knows what a zipper sounds like unzipping and he knows what it means when the stranger's hand tightens in his hair, angling his head, and because he does know all of this, Clyde opens his mouth without being told. His stomach is in knots the way it always is in that dream where he shows up to school and has to take a test he didn't know about and none of the questions are written in English; and for a moment, he thinks maybe this is a dream. But then the stranger's cockhead is rubbing against his lips and even before it pushes past his teeth, opening him wider and filling him, Clyde knows this isn't any sort of dream at all.

At first he's worried that he won't do it right, but soon enough he realizes he doesn't have to do anything except be an open hole and the stranger will do the rest.

After he comes on Clyde's face, the stranger slaps him. Not hard, though, and Clyde thinks maybe it's an expression of satisfaction. Eyes still closed, he feels the stranger touch his shoulder again, realizes he's wiping off the come he got on his palm when he slapped Clyde's cheek.

Clyde stays kneeling, eyes closed, as he listens to the stranger's footsteps receding back up the alley. He knows he should get to his feet or at least open his eyes when he hears new footsteps, but he doesn't. He wonders if he'll open his mouth, if these new fingers tangle in his hair.

"Hey."

Oh. "Leave me alone, Kenny."

Kenny kneels next to him. He doesn't say anything for a long time, at least three minutes because Clyde gets up to one hundred seventy-five in his head and he didn't start counting the seconds right away. Kenny cracks the silence with a sigh before he breaks it more with words. "If you really want to be alone, I'll leave you alone. But Clyde, dude—you don't have to be alone."

Clyde doesn't know how to respond to that. He hears Kenny shifting and hates himself for the way his heart sinks when he thinks Kenny is getting up and leaving right after saying something like that. There are no footsteps, though, and when Clyde opens his eyes he sees that Kenny has folded himself down to sit cross-legged on the ground. As soon as their eyes meet, Clyde looks away. After a moment, he shifts himself to a sitting position, too.

"Damn," Kenny says, and Clyde glances over as Kenny touches his shoulder. "He got spunk on your letterman jacket."

"Yeah," Clyde says, thinking only now to wipe his face.

"Are you—" Kenny hesitates, then says, "Okay?"

Clyde thinks Kenny was probably going to ask if he was crying, and then changed it. Somehow that makes Clyde smile. "Yeah," he says. "Just more spunk."

He raises his arm to use his sleeve, which he thinks might be more effective than his hand, but Kenny says, "Don't—wait, here, use this," and hands him a crumpled handkerchief.

"Thanks, man." Clyde cleans himself off as best he can, and then isn't sure what to do with the handkerchief; he's a disposable tissue man himself. "I should wash this for you. I'll get it back to you somehow."

"You know where I live," Kenny says.

They lapse into quiet again.

And again Kenny is the one to break it. "Dude—you know where I live, right?" Clyde looks at him, prepared to reassure him that he'll give the handkerchief back, but when their eyes meet Kenny says, "I want you to come to me when you—instead of coming here, come to me, okay? I won't charge you. Just don't. Don't end up like—I mean, I know things feel bad for you, but you don't have to do this, you know?"

Clyde keeps looking; it's Kenny who looks away.

"Just come to me when you need to, okay?" Kenny says. He looks at Clyde again now, his mouth quirking up on one side. "I'll even let you pretend I'm not blond, if you let me pretend you are."

For a moment, Clyde thinks they're playing the exact same game and wonders how he never realized it before; and then he remembers the look that flashed across Kenny's face when Butters showed up at Homecoming two years ago with that kid he went to gay camp with, Bradley something. Same game, then: different edition.

"Okay," Clyde says. He might even mean it.

They get to their feet and head back to the street. "You're gonna be okay, you know," Kenny says, bumping Clyde's shoulder with his own as they turn onto the sidewalk.

"So are you," Clyde says. Then, inspired by his mom's favorite movie, he adds, "Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow..."

He's almost, but not entirely, surprised when Kenny finishes, "But soon, and for the rest of our lives?"

"Something like that, yeah."

Kenny grins like he wants to believe it. As they walk down the dark end of the street, Clyde does, too.


End file.
